What we learned about Mo. voters from the Akin/McCaskill race

Rep. Akin, left, lost a large chunk of votes to Sen. McCaskill in Missouri's U.S. Senate race thanks in large part to women and young people backing McCaskill.

Credit Kristofor Husted, Scott Pham / KBIA

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With the election in the rearview mirror, the national parties have spent the last week poring through the results and voter demographic data. Turns out women, young people and Latino voters matter a lot in a presidential race.

Here in Missouri, the results for the U.S. Senate race displayed some similarities.

In August when Rep. Todd Akin said on TV that women’s bodies have ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of quote “legitimate rape,” he not only triggered a trap targeting conservatives who are against abortion in any circumstance, he opened a door to which voters make the difference in Missouri now.

Despite multiple apologies from Akin, Missouri voters could not move past that comment. An Associated Press exit poll on Election Day showed that nearly two-thirds of Missouri voters said that they gave his comment consideration in the booth. And those who did consider the comment, overwhelmingly voted for his opponent, incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. She ended up winning with nearly 55 percent of the vote to his 39 percent.

Peverill Squire, a political science professor at MU, says this race was won in the middle with moderate voters.

“Missouri voters are willing to be conservative but not if you’re too far to the right," he tells KBIA. "I think on abortion, I think there are probably a lot of people who are not comfortable with completely banning abortion in all instances. Akin’s comments in that regard coupled with comments about social security and Medicare and some other programs made enough moderate voters uncomfortable that they were willing to vote for McCaskill.”

Indeed, McCaskill garnered nearly 6,000 more state votes in Missouri’s Senate race than Republican Gov. Mitt Romney did in the state’s vote for president, which he won handily. The AP’s exit polls suggest the senator owes much of her victory to women, since young and middle-age women turned out in droves to back her. She also commanded the youth vote by earning a 20 percent swing in support since her 2006 race.

"I think it’s pretty clear that particularly women drifted towards McCaskill," Squire says," and if you look at a geographical pattern, Akin managed to lose outside St. Louis, where he would have been expected to win. So I think a lot of suburban voters abandoned the republicans in that race."

Still, just like the national Republican Party has been forced to do in the wake of the election, the state GOP may have to regroup and reevaluate its stance on issues the party is losing voters on, such as abortion and immigration. Squire says it won’t be an easy discussion for the state leaders to have, but it might be a mandatory one if the national leaders have anything to say about it.

“I think nationally there is going to be a lot of pressure to take those issues off the agenda to try to keep them from being used against republicans nationally in the next elections,” Squire says.

Related Content

Missouri congressman Todd Akin called it his "six-second mistake." But his brief remark about "legitimate rape" was more than enough to sink his U.S. Senate campaign.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill defeated her Republican challenger with nearly 55 percent of the vote to Akin's 39 percent in Tuesday's election. It was the largest margin of victory in a Missouri Senate race since 1994.

Listen to Sen. Claire McCaskill chat about her bid to keep her Senate seat.

KBIA’s Kristofor Husted interviews Sen. Claire McCaskill, who is challenging Rep. Todd Akin to keep her seat in the U.S. Senate in the November 6 election.

In the interview (which took place before McCaskill’s mother died), the senator talks about the difference between her and Akin when it comes to women’s issues including equal pay for women and access to emergency contraception. She talks about what she would say to women who have backed Akin after his controversial comment on pregnancy and rape. McCaskill also discusses her plan to make sure small business continues to grow in the state and her stance on keeping federal loans and grants available to students who depend on them.